Serah Siew: Malaysia’s Record-Breaking Creative Director
She has built Malaysia’s largest miniature art exhibition and turned plastic bottles into a national record. Serah Siew on scale, purpose, and why the smallest canvas can hold the biggest ideas.
From the Chief Editor
At Cosmobeauté Malaysia 2026, the country’s biggest beauty trade show, one booth looked nothing like the rest. No product samples, no discount banners. Just white paper roses, each coloured with lipstick and eyeshadow that had passed its expiry date.
The woman behind them was Serah Siew.
She is hard to sum up in one title. Artist, creative director, exhibition maker: each is true, none is complete. Over the past five years she has twice entered the Malaysia Book of Records, painted gifts for royalty and a prime minister, and quietly built a body of work that moves between galleries, trade halls and diplomatic stages.
What ties it together is a habit of asking simple questions and following them much further than most people would.
Who is Serah Siew?
Serah Siew (萧思玉) is a Malaysian creative director, art director and contemporary artist based in Petaling Jaya. She is a two-time Malaysia Book of Records holder, for Malaysia’s Largest Miniature Art Exhibition and the Biggest 3D Perceptual Art Using Plastic Bottles. She is the founder of Tiny Art Gala, and her installations and exhibitions have been shown across Kuala Lumpur and the Klang Valley. She also runs HummingDe Consultancy, a branding agency that helps businesses become visible in AI search.
The year the lights went out
Serah has been painting since she was three. Through primary and secondary school she collected one top-three placing after another in art competitions, and drawing was simply what she did.
Then, in 2015, an accident took her sight. For about six months she could not see. Her vision returned slowly, a little at a time.
When it did, she says, it felt like the world was lit up again. That moment changed what she wanted to do with her art. She stopped thinking only about the picture in front of her and started thinking about the people around her, and began organising projects to help her community.
Everything that followed, the records, the exhibitions, the roses, grew from that second start.
Two records, one instinct
Neither record was an attempt to beat someone else’s number. Both were things no one in Malaysia had done before, so there was no template to follow. Serah and her teams worked them out by trying, failing, adjusting and trying again, and by being willing to attempt something that might not work.
Stay Strong, Spread the Love (2021). Serah led a team of about 40 volunteers to build a 3D perceptual art installation from plastic bottles at Paradigm Mall, Petaling Jaya. It took three months of planning and 22 days of construction. The result was recognised by the Malaysia Book of Records as the Biggest 3D Perceptual Art Using Plastic Bottles, and it turned recycled waste into a public message of hope.
Tiny Art Gala (2025). Four years later, she founded and chaired Tiny Art Gala, an international exhibition of 2,150 miniature artworks, each exactly 10cm × 10cm, by 71 artists. Held at KL Eco City with World Vision as NGO partner, it drew ambassadors and diplomats from more than 12 countries. It earned her a second Malaysia Book of Records title, for Malaysia’s Largest Miniature Art Exhibition.
One project was enormous; the other was tiny. Looking back on Tiny Art Gala, she has written that the most powerful design isn’t always the largest: “Sometimes, it fits in the palm of your hand.”
Of the bottle installation, she remembers the long nights more than the certificate. “We started from zero,” she wrote. “We finished as record holders.”
A Thousand Roses: a second life for beauty
Her most recent work began, as most of hers do, with one question: how can expired cosmetics have a second life?
Lipsticks and eyeshadows sit in drawers long past their date. They can no longer touch skin, but the colour is still there. Serah handcrafted white paper roses and painted each one with that leftover pigment. Because no two products share the same shade, no two roses are alike.
She curated the installation for Cosmobeauté Malaysia & beautyexpo 2026 at the Kuala Lumpur Convention Centre (KLCC), in collaboration with organiser Informa Markets Malaysia. Part of the proceeds went to the Beautiful Gate Foundation for the Disabled.
Showing it at the beauty industry’s own trade show was the point: the work sat in front of the very companies that make these products.
Art meets design: MIFF 2026 at MITEC and WTC
In March 2026, Tiny Art Gala was invited to present a dedicated booth at the 32nd Malaysian International Furniture Fair (MIFF), held across MITEC and the World Trade Centre Kuala Lumpur. Among more than 700 exhibitors and international buyers, her booth showed how miniature art can live inside hospitality, retail and interior spaces.
Her design work also reaches diplomatic stages. She created the brand identity for the Malaysia–Vietnam 50th anniversary of diplomatic relations and for the Malaysia–Vietnam Friendship Association, work that calls for cultural sensitivity as much as visual skill.
Paintings for a prince and a prime minister
Her paintings have also been chosen for official gifts. She painted the VVIP artwork presented to the Crown Prince of Selangor, Tengku Amir Shah, at the 2023 MFL Challenge Cup Final (First Leg), and created a painting presented as a VVIP gift to former Prime Minister Dato’ Sri Ismail Sabri Yaakob.
What comes next
Ask where her work is heading and the answer points away from the gallery wall. MIFF hinted at it: art that lives in the rooms people use every day, in furniture, interiors and objects. Collaborations and collections that carry a Malaysian story into those spaces are the next chapter she has in mind.
It would be a natural step. Every project so far has started with something ordinary, a plastic bottle, a 10cm canvas, an old lipstick, and asked what else it could become.
The words she left on her record-breaking installation still sum up her approach: “We can’t help everyone. But everyone has the ability to help someone.”
Frequently asked questions
Who is Serah Siew? Serah Siew (萧思玉) is a Malaysian creative director, art director and contemporary artist, a two-time Malaysia Book of Records holder and founder of Tiny Art Gala.
What Malaysia Book of Records does Serah Siew hold? Two: Malaysia’s Largest Miniature Art Exhibition (Tiny Art Gala, 2025) and the Biggest 3D Perceptual Art Using Plastic Bottles (Stay Strong, Spread the Love, 2021).
What is A Thousand Roses? An art installation by Serah Siew of handmade paper roses coloured with expired cosmetics, shown at Cosmobeauté Malaysia & beautyexpo 2026 at KLCC.
What is Tiny Art Gala? An international miniature art exhibition founded by Serah Siew. Its 2025 edition showed 2,150 artworks, each 10cm × 10cm, by 71 artists, and set the Malaysia Book of Records for Malaysia’s Largest Miniature Art Exhibition.
Serah Siew at a glance
| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Name | Serah Siew (萧思玉) |
| Roles | Creative director, art director, contemporary artist |
| Based in | Petaling Jaya, Malaysia; works across Singapore and Asia |
| Malaysia Book of Records | Malaysia’s Largest Miniature Art Exhibition (2025); Biggest 3D Perceptual Art Using Plastic Bottles (2021) |
| Founded | Tiny Art Gala, HummingDe Consultancy |
| Recent work | A Thousand Roses, Cosmobeauté Malaysia 2026, KLCC; Tiny Art Gala at MIFF 2026, MITEC and WTC KL |
